Friday, 20 April 2012

Jubilee Pool, Penzance by Johnny Lamb

When thinking about
lidos, my thoughts turn immediately to my friend the musicologist.
She has one of those minds capable of the kind of focus that all
academics must have, but also, she has the gift of the childlike
ability to turn that focus to the irrational and whimsical. The
musicologist loves the lido at Penzance, until the summer though, it
was a place of indifference for me. That has changed. Now that place
with its iron fencing perched on the front and isolated from the sea
that it longs to join and merge with in playful reunion is a potent
sign for me, and a portrait of someone now absent. Despite the
apparent tragedy of the pool’s separation from the ocean, it is a
beautiful thing.

The musicologist had
devised a game. We were to swim in all of Cornwall’s tidal pools,
allowing ourselves time for hot drinks or brandy afterwards. To her I
think it was a romantic vision of crisp university lawns, esoteric
conversation and cream cakes. If you could punt in a tidal pool, I’d
like to think she would have. To me it was more an image of
misbehaving in beach-front bars, a bearded, chain-smoking wastrel,
hell bent on the masculine practice of seeming impervious to cold
water, while relentlessly pulling on an endless supply of boxes of
ten Mayfair. The EA composer completed our team, comedically
wetsuited and cheerful, with a healthy look to his face. I think we
went to three of them. The list hung largely unticked above the
musicologist’s desk for too long. I regret this.

The musicologist has a
friend in Penzance, and she would regularly disappear for the day,
returning to tell stories of her swims. Once, the sun had rouged her
white skin, making it vicious across her shoulders, tight and hot,
livid and threatening to peel. I never went with her, except one day
when the lido was closed, to try and make a recording for this
project. It was the first time I really looked at it. It’s
wonderful. And now, with the musicologist far away, I go out of my
way to go past it.

I walk from the
fisherman’s monument at Newlyn, along the coastline towards St
Michael’s Mount. On the best days, when it’s raining, the waves
will reach out over the road, soaking car and cyclist
indiscriminately as you approach the pool. It is a relic I suppose.
Some strange idea of the Victorians, to tame an unambitious section
of the sea, so they could bask like seals in the drizzling Cornish
summers, whipped by pious winds. How very fucking English. I imagine
those giant striped swimming costumes completed by a stupid straw hat
coupled with a judgemental gaze and a closeted and bitter sexuality.
But this is one of those rare things, a relic that remains of use. It
refuses to die, or change. (It seems like an echo of Newlyn’s tired
and diminished fishing fleet, which I also love). The barbed iron
gate seems to lock out the development around it, like a cultural
nature reserve. As the old seaside charm gives way to nightclubs,
pretentious delicatessens, chain bakeries, sports bars and pound
shops, the whitewashed walls of the empty pool lie dormant for
another summer of shrieking children, reclining women and strutting
men, escaped for a short time from the details of their lives.

Lidos seem like
photographs, a site for atavism. Even the very old are childlike when
they swim. It is often the noise of people swimming that occurs to
me. It’s one of those strange formless sounds where human beings
seem like a swarm. But excited human voices are full of timbre and
melody, unlike bees or locusts that drone in uniform tones.

Delight in something so
simple, so primal. There is no need for technology in the water. No
need even for company. Just the body within the element. The lido is
in Penzance, but it is also separate, somewhere else. To enter its
space is to leave the town behind. We swim in our nostalgia
willingly, removed from the outside, and immersed in more than the
water, and to each person I suppose a different time. I cannot help
but relate the pool to the nineteen eighties, but to others it would
be other numbers that date their image of a lido. I relate it too to
the musicologist and the half forgotten, never made trips to the
tidal pools. When she visits, I will take her to Penzance.

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Lido

Lido is an instrumental album by Darren Hayman about open air Swimming Pools. This blog will feature words, pictures and sounds about Lidos by various people. The record will be released in September 2012 on vinyl by 'Where It's At Is Where You Are' records and on CD by Clay Pipe Music.